Daily newspaper from Baytown, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Anthropogenic CO2 released from fossil fuel combustion is a primary greenhouse gas which contributes to “global warming.” It is estimated that stationary power generation contributes over one-third of total CO2 emissions. Reducing CO2 in the atmosphere can be accomplished either by decreasing the rate at which CO2 is emitted into the atmosphere or by increasing the rate at which it is removed from it. Extensive research has been conducted on determining a fast and inexpensive method to sequester carbon dioxide. These methods can be classified into two categories, CO2 fixation by natural sink process for CO2, or direct CO2 sequestration by artificial processes. In direct sequestration, CO2 produced from sources such as coal-fired power plants, would be captured from the exhausted gases. CO2 from a combustion exhaust gas is absorbed with an aqueous ammonia solution through scrubbing. The captured CO2 is then used to synthesize ammonium bicarbonate (ABC or NH4HCO3), an economical source of nitrogen fertilizer. In this work, we studied the carbon distribution after fertilizer is synthesized from CO2. The synthesized fertilizer in laboratory is used as a “CO2 carrier” to “transport” CO2 from the atmosphere to crops. After biological assimilation and metabolism in crops treated with ABC, a …

In recent years, the search to develop large-area solar cells at low cost has led to research on photovoltaic (PV) systems based on nanocomposites containing conjugated polymers. These composite films can be synthesized and processed at lower costs and with greater versatility than the solid state inorganic semiconductors that comprise today's solar cells. However, the best nanocomposite solar cells are based on a complex architecture, consisting of a fine blend of interpenetrating and percolating donor and acceptor materials. Cell performance is strongly dependent on blend morphology, and solution-based fabrication techniques often result in uncontrolled and irreproducible blends, whose composite morphologies are difficult to characterize accurately. Here we incorporate 3-dimensional hyper-branched colloidal semiconductor nanocrystals in solution-processed hybrid organic-inorganic solar cells, yielding reproducible and controlled nanoscale morphology.

A combination of cyclic polarization tests, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, and electrochemical quartz crystal microbalance (EQCM) measurements indicate a film is formed when aluminum is polarized above 4.5V in 1:1 EC+DMC with 1M LiBOB. The quantity of film that is formed increases with increasing applied potential. Results of EQCM tests suggest the film is AlBO{sub 3}. The film is very protective against corrosion and inhibits pitting corrosion of aluminum in normally corrosive 1M LiTFSI.

Daily newspaper from Perry, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Surfactant flooding has the potential to significantly increase recovery over that of conventional waterflooding. The availability of a large number of surfactant structures makes it possible to conduct a systematic study of the relation between surfactant structure and its efficacy for oil recovery. A mixture of two surfactants was found to be particularly effective for application in carbonate formations at low temperature. The mixture is single phase for higher salinity or calcium concentrations than that for either surfactant used alone. This makes it possible to inject the surfactant slug with polymer close to optimal conditions and yet be single phase. A formulation has been designed for a particular field application. It uses partially hydrolyzed polyacrylamide for mobility control. The addition of an alkali such as sodium carbonate makes possible in situ generation of naphthenic soap and significant reduction of synthetic surfactant adsorption. The design of the process to maximize the region of ultra-low IFT takes advantage of the observation that the ratio of soap to synthetic surfactant is a parameter in the conditions for optimal salinity. Even for a fixed ratio of soap to surfactant, the range of salinity for low IFT was wider than that reported for surfactant systems …